About
Jeff Somers (www.jeffreysomers.com) began writing by court order as an attempt to steer his creative impulses away from engineering genetic grotesqueries. He has published nine novels (including the Avery Cates cyberpunk series and The Ustari Cycle urban fantasy series) and over fifty short stories, including “Ringing the Changes,” which was selected for inclusion in Best American Mystery Stories 2006 and “The Little Birds,” published in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine in 2023. He writes about books for BookBub, the craft of writing for Writer’s Digest (which published his book Writing Without Rules), and everything else for Lifehacker. His tenth novel Five Funerals will be published by Ruadán Books in February 2026. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, The Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.
Featured Work
Five Funerals
The graduating class of Bishop Carlbus Prep has a secret.
The Outing Party is a tradition at Bishop Carlbus, a semi-illicit party hosted by a Senior student after the annual Outing, a weekend field trip taken by the graduating class every year. In 1995, Amy Keaton was determined to host a legendary Outing Party, but everything goes wrong. Her classmates are rude. Someone seems to be sabotaging her plans. And as the night goes on resentment and rage start driving everyone to extremes. The party spins out of control, and by the next morning Amy Keaton is dead, and twenty-five kids have a soul-crushing secret.
In 2015, six Bishop Carlbus Prep alumnus—Victor, Kate, Leo, Titus, Ida, and Winnie—gather for the funeral of their old high school classmate Zillah. They soon realize that they are now the sole surviving members of the Class of 1995—everyone else who attended Amy Keaton’s Outing Party is dead. And many of those deaths are bizarre and shocking. Sucked dry by leeches. Consumed by mice. Swept out to sea.
The survivors begin piecing together the events of the last two decades, and wonder: Is someone hunting them? Are they next?
And, maybe, do they deserve to be next?
